


To Hide His Reason for Pride

by FanficCornerWriter19



Series: His Reason For Pride [7]
Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, The Scarlet Pimpernel - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Darcy Angsting, Everyone is Angsting, F/M, Feels, First Proposal Aftermath, It's Percy's turn after last time, Percy Angsting, Percy's a good friend, hopeful-ish ending, okay it WILL be hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficCornerWriter19/pseuds/FanficCornerWriter19
Summary: Burdened by his own loneliness and sorrow, Percy decides to take a break and visit his friend Darcy. However, when he stops at London, Darcy's butler informs him that he isn't at home, though Percy can very well see to the contrary. What's happened this time?Percy finds Darcy in as bad a situation as he was five months ago.Or: How Percy finds Darcy with a disgraceful cravat and doesn't scold him for it.





	To Hide His Reason for Pride

**Author's Note:**

> This one's from Percy's POV instead of Fitz's.

* * *

After Easter I decide to pay old Darcy a visit – I’m demmed if I can find a reason beyond the echoing loneliness of my house in Richmond and the mocking laughter of my Marguerite in my ears.

I ask for Darcy, and sink me if that butler of his don’t stammer that his master is not at home. I ask after Miss Georgiana, and he replies ‘At Pemberley’. Ah-ha, I have him! There is a light burning where there should not be, and in the twilight I can see it quite clearly. I bound past the butler despite his protests and grab a lit candlestick – if I can only find that demmed light!

Finally I reach the library. I crack open the door, and I see two bottles of – _is that whisky?_ Begad, it is! I dash in, worried, not caring that my polished boots make soft thuds against the carpet.

One of the bottles is empty, and the other only a glass-full away from being so. _Fie, fie! Darcy, what could have dragged you to such depths?_ I turn to look at the face of the figure in the chair.

And what a shock I get! Darcy’s face is the most dreadful shade of grey, and his eyes are horridly bloodshot, as though he has deprived himself of sleep for God knows how many nights and days. His cravat is in a lopsided knot, and were I not so puzzled at the situation, I would have shaken him for leaving his clothes in such a disgraceful state.

But most frightening of all is the haunted emptiness in his hazel eyes – the hazel eyes that seem a blend of milk and coffee in the finest golden cup, for the golden ring that surrounds his irises. Now that is gone, and, hang it all, so seems his soul.

He raises the terrible howling eyes to me and he growls hoarsely, “Go away, Percy.”

I am damned if I do! “No,” say I firmly, seating myself in the other chair. For now, I shall ignore any and all requests and orders he makes unless I myself deem them sensible. “You rarely drink anything at all, Darcy, and even then it is sherry or wine!” I cry. “What then, is this?” I point at the condemning bottles.

He laughs, an awful little self-deprecating chuckle. “I never thought I would stoop so low as to drink whisky, for certain, Percy,” he murmurs. “Let alone from the bottle.”

“La! I should say so,” I say angrily. “And what exactly do you think you do?”

He turns away from me, and he tells me in a voice just loud enough for me to hear, “Go away, Percy. It is not your place to bear my heartbreak.”

I have him. Yet I feel no joy at this, only a sad little thrill of sympathy. He too has had his heart taken and smashed, and his dignity and pride along with it. For we are proud men, are Darcy and I, and we look upon the destruction of our faith in ourselves as the end of our very spirits. I know I did. “You took it upon yourself to bear mine,” I rejoin, gently now. “It’s but the polite thing to repay the favour, more so because you are my friend.”

“It is nothing –”

“Damn me if it is nothing!” I roar, startling him slightly. “I have never seen you look so disheveled in the whole of our acquaintance, and I wish to know why. Stop shying away and out with it, man!”

A reluctant smile creeps across his lips. “Impatient as ever, I see, Perce.”

“Implacable as ever, I see, Darce, what?” I twitch my lips, but I cannot smile, can I?

He heaves a great sigh, bows his head, and begins:

“Elizabeth Bennet of Hertfordshire was unknown to me until a year ago in October. We met – or should I say, we came to know of each other’s presences – at an assembly on the 15th to welcome Bingley to Meryton. I – am ashamed to say I insulted her. She bore it well, and only laughed it off, with great audacity. I noticed her as the most well-informed woman in the room, with a certain expression in dark green eyes that drew me to her with an irresistible pull.

“We argued, we sparred, and we battled every chance we got – every time we met. She teased me and I tried to tease her – but sadly, I am unused to being teased. All the time I was fighting an attraction to her, aye, even on the very mission that you commended me for.”

What? He had been attracted to her even on that first voyage that could have taken his life? I try not to let him see that I am startled, lest he halt and I never know the rest.

“I jumped at the chance to pull myself away from her, to lengthen the distance between me and her arch smirks, her laughter. It was no use – I loved her. Love her, present tense.” He laughed another awful little laugh. “And at Easter, when I went to visit my dragon aunt, who should I find as a visitor to her cousin the clergyman but Elizabeth Bennet!

“I eventually made up my mind to ask her to marry me, and I am afraid I did it in the most senseless, boorish way possible. Even you would have smacked me upside the head if you had heard me, Percy.”

“I was not there, old boy, so I cannot well pass judgement on that, what?” I say, not very cheerfully.

“Needless to say she would not stand for it, and rejected me with the angriest, fiercest, most scathingly disdainful tirade I have ever been subjected to.” He stares into the fire as though his memories are being reincarnated within the flames that dance in his eyes. His voice rises now, a pleading, deep tone that is somewhere between a wail and a scream.

“And more than ever now she will not leave me alone; she haunts my every step, mocking me with her words that ring in my ears every action I take! My very honour as a gentleman comes into question: **had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner**. I shall never forget those exact words. _You are the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed on to marry,_ she said _._ The worst of it all is that I wonder if she is right.”

Even I know that she is. This Elizabeth Bennet, whoever she is, has somehow seen past my friend’s façade of uncaring arrogance and into his heart to discover the prideful boy inside.

“It is like a mirror,” he continues bitterly. “I look into my every action as though it were a stranger’s and again her words ring with truth. Still I cling to my wrongful pride, for it is all I have now that is my own – I have lived with it too long to know how to do without.”

There lies his mistake.

“I have so much time – I think and I think and I think and the more that I think, the more I feel that my pride has been grafted into me, so much now that it is me – so that I cannot live without my pride.” He sniffles, and I understand.

Darcy is clutching at what shambles of his old life remain. He used to live unaware of his pride, and now that he knows of it he is lost. He has no idea what to do now that his pride and his spirit and his heart have been taken by the girl he loves and shattered so carelessly. His old world lies in the shards that shine at his feet.

When I was like that, he reached out and touched me. It was Darcy who brought me here, and it is Darcy who I shall bring back. However, knowing that he hates touch is a problem – I cannot risk offending him now. Yet all humans, I have found, long for contact in times of pain. When I was in pain, it was Darcy who contacted me.

Human touch is our bridge to each other, and when human touch is gone, humans are as well. By Gad, if everyone in England touched as much as the romantic Frenchies did, I’d bet we would all be a bit happier. I usually don’t touch either, for I am too afraid of snake-bites, but Darcy, I trust. I want to cross the gap, and I’ll be demmed if I allow him to stop me!

I reach over and clap his shoulder, letting my hand linger. I can practically feel the pain in his body, the tension in his muscles.

And suddenly he is kneeling in front of my chair, crying into my lap, and for once I don’t mind at all that my clothes are getting soiled – demmed good ones too – because Darcy is finally crossing the bridge.

I understand why he is such an emotional mess.

Elizabeth’s rejection not only broke his heart, it broke his spirit and it broke his pride. He looked in the mirror with the knowledge that she hated him and found himself wanting. Because his eyes were finally opened, he is lost, with no idea what to do with this new knowledge that he never truly knew himself, that he, to whom disguise of every sort is an abhorrence, is indeed a master of it to have deceived himself for so long.

He does not know how to trust himself again. He has lost his self-confidence.

How would I know? Because he told me earlier, and because I understand that world beyond his words. I have lived there once in my lifetime and I never wish to go near that place again.

Like he once did for me, I shall help him learn to live again.

I lean forwards until his forehead touches mine, and his hair pricks my eyelids. “I understand, alright? I understand.”

“I know; oh God, I know.” His voice is soft, hoarse, and demmit but I am on the verge of weeping myself. Darcy is broken, but I knew it was necessary. I thank this Elizabeth Bennet for what she has done for him, even while I recall the two God-damned bottles of whisky and curse her for the damage.

When his sadness is spent, he looks up at me with a blank hazel slate in his eyes. I stand, and help him up, then I say, “Odd’s life, m'dear fellow, whatever possessed you to avoid bathing? For God’s sake, go do it now and make yourself at least a bit presentable, what?”

He laughs his own familiar laugh, and slicks the hair back from his face. “Thank you, Percy.”

I paraphrase his words of five months ago, hoping that he sees that I shall always stand there ready to help him. “Forever, Darcy.”


End file.
